The power and the fury

Puzzle is not a word Europeans usually associate with the radical religious-right movements that will cheer today when President Bush formally accepts the Republican Party's nomination. Cultural fury, ultra-nationalism, paranoid populism... yes. But it is assumed that right-wing Christian fundamentalism has natural roots in a country created by Puritan immigrants, especially in the South and Midwest. Its political existence is no puzzle.

In this election year, however, some observers have been taking a closer look at the American right. And what they say upends some common assumptions.

First, the neo-conservative movement has only recently come to dominate the Republican Party. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge (The Right Nation, Penguin), both writers for The Economist, give a useful brief history of the process that led from Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate in 1964 (roundly beaten by Lyndon Johnson and regarded as extremist by many Republicans) to Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. The agenda, far from going with America like bread with cheese, required a considerable realignment of American partisan politics.

Second, while the cultural agenda of the religious right (on abortion, genetic research, school prayer and gay marriage) is divisive, the economic agenda has been so thoroughly accepted that the national political centre has made a significant shift to the right. The "New Democrats" (represented by Bill Clinton) have made countless concessions on labour law, welfare, social security, privatisation and deregulation. When John Kerry promised to undo President Bush's tax cuts for the very rich, this was considered a significant stand.

The picture that Mr Micklethwait and Mr Wooldridge draw is not simple. For example, despite the rhetoric about the minimal state, President Bush has actually increased discretionary government spending and overseen an increase in government employment (partly as a reaction to 9/11). But rhetoric is significant, the neo-liberal doctrines are being implemented (and it is all being followed carefully by some neo-liberal European political parties).

Third, some of the heartlands of the radical right have a 19th-century history of left-wing radicalism. Thomas Frank (What's the Matter with America?, Secker and Warburg) has written a vivid book that depicts what the American culture war is like in his home state, where the religious right has come to dominate state politics to such a degree that even liberal Republican politicians feel they need to mouth fundamentalist pieties or they would risk losing their party's core support.

But while the cultural fury ("rage is a bumper crop here...") has historic roots, it used to be associated with left-wing radicalism (so too were some famous preachers). In the 1890s, driven by bad prices, debt and deflation, radicalised farmers wanted farm aid, state ownership of railroads and graduated income tax; they drove Republicans out of office and were represented on from the town council to the state supreme court. Women's suffrage was achieved in full by 1912 and abortion laws were liberalised ahead of most other US states.

By the 1990s, however, the left-wing bitterness against economic elites had become right-wing populist vituperation against the "sinful" cosmopolitan liberal elite in Washington, New York and Kansas City. And yet, what working-class middle Americans have to show for their Republican demands for a smaller state and lower taxes "are lower wages, more dangerous jobs, dirtier air..." The economic climate is such that two-thirds of Kansas counties have lost population since 1980, some by up to 25 per cent.

According to Mr Frank, and he does provide many illustrations, working-class Kansans are victims of corporate greed and cronyism. Yet, they blame someone else - the liberal cultural elite that dominates the media, that represents working-class America as inadequate and stupid, as what success should guard you against. While the media's films, advertisements and sitcoms are driven by corporate profits (sex and violence sell), the radical right movement sees the motive as a liberal social agenda, full of mendacity, bias and corruption that ruins family cohesion.

Mr Frank sees the cultural right's vision of life - an apocalyptic backlash vision that expects political martyrdom, not victory - as in some ways "an old-fashioned leftist vision of the world with the economics drained out".

"Kansas gloats when celebrities say stupid things; it cheers when movie stars go to jail. And when two female rock stars exchange a lascivious kiss on national TV, Kansas goes haywire. Kansas screams for the heads of the liberal elite. Kansas comes running to the polling place. And Kansas cuts those rock stars' taxes."

Do not tell me it could not happen elsewhere.

ranierfsadni@europe.com